HUGH
THOMPSON:
"During flying around we came across a ditch.
It had bodies in it, a lot of them -- women, kids, old men. I remember
a thought going through my mind, 'How did these people get in a ditch?'
And I finally thought about the Nazis, I guess, and marching everybody
down into a ditch and blowing 'em away. Here we are supposed to be the
good guys in the white hats. It upset me."

As of January 11, 2006, more
than 3,000
blog entries have been posted
since the January 6 passing of Hugh Thompson, Jr., the military
helicopter pilot who landed his bird in the midst of the March 1968 "My
Lai Massacre." He is credited with helping to stop the killing.

The blogs are from Left, Right, Center. They show a national grassroots
outpouring over the death of little known 62 year old Thompson. The new
blog technology allows a national ceremony of grief and admiration for
a man rarely honored in the mainstream media.

The blogs celebrate in a new technology something philosophers and
theologians, movies and novels have been honoring from ancient
beginnings -- appreciation for those special individuals who answer the
call of the moment to risk all -- to do what must be done -- whatever
the cost.

Thompson ordered his gunners to shoot American soldiers if the killing
of civilians continued. G.I.'s had ran "amuck" to kill more than 500
Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet known as "Pinkville" -- herding them
into ditches, raping and shooting young women in what was later
described as "a
Nazi
kind
of thing."

Few, if any, shots had been fired that morning at American forces. But
the destruction at My Lai was carried out by stressed, poorly led
soldiers who had suffered numerous sniper and booby trap attacks -- and
viewed civilians in the village as part of the communist war effort.